


Finding a Dream - A Super Sons Story

by gmartinez12



Category: Batman (Comics), DC Rebirth - Fandom, DCU (Comics), DamiJon, Robin (Comics), Super Sons (Comics), Superboy (Comics), Superman (Comics), Supersons
Genre: Drama, Feelstrip, Heartbreak, M/M, Violence, references to multiple timelines, sfw, someone hug Damian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-14
Updated: 2017-03-14
Packaged: 2018-10-05 06:17:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10299470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gmartinez12/pseuds/gmartinez12
Summary: Synopsis: Damian starts having dreams about a friend that he used to have, but  seemed to have mysteriously disappeared from history. A name kept popping up—a boy named Colin Wilkes.





	

**Author's Note:**

>   
>  [](http://imgur.com/HaHZrIm)   
>    
> 
> 
> *Author’s notes at the end will explain all the context! (for non-comic book readers)
> 
> yyyyes! I finally finished this! I"m so proud of this story because this is my first-ever serious sfw fanfic! I really hope you guys al enjoy it :D
> 
> This fic is basically inspired by this pic in tumblr http://damijon-supersons.tumblr.com/image/157684536609
> 
> Basically, the premise is: Jon has to support and comfort Damian, who’s begun to have recurring dreams of a friend he was supposed to have…a friend that doesn’t exist in this timeline…a boy named Colin Wilkes.

**Finding a Dream**

By gmartinez

 

 

 

“Damian, slow down!”

“Ironic, considering you’re the one with super speed. I’m leaving you behind if you don’t keep up!”

Jon sighed in resignation as Damian ran ahead of him. They were at an abandoned warehouse this time, another late night out in Damian’s frenzied search for someone who seemed to never actually be there. Damian leaped atop a stack of container vans, meticulously searching for any clues. Jon trudged behind him, trying his best to pretend he didn’t want to go home. Not that Damian was stopping him, but he was too worried about his friend to even consider leaving.

“What are we looking for?” Jon asked.

“Containers that have Santa Priscan labels. Crates designed to hold vials of chemicals. This is supposed to be where Scarecrow performed his Venom experiments on him.” Damian didn’t bother to check up on Jon as he jumped onto another crate.

“Right…”

Jon didn’t understand everything that Damian had said, but he didn’t feel very compelled to have Damian explain it all over again. He also didn’t want to point out that if this place had indeed been used as a villain’s lair in the past, Damian, his father, the Gotham Police Department, and even the entire Justice League would have had a record on it.

But there weren’t any records of it at all—Damian had rushed here based solely on a vague recollection from the night before.

Damian was chasing the wisp of a dream, and Jon—for better or worse—was there to watch him.

***

 

_I’m not making this up! He’s real, he has a name, and we fought crime side-by-side!_

That was what Damian had told Jon when the dreams had started. Jon shook his head—at first, he’d been very supportive when Damian had set out on his search, enthusiastically helping the Boy Wonder comb through alleys and rooftops for any sign of the friend that he’d dreamt about. But even a ten-year-old like Jon knew when something was pointless. Fragments of a half-forgotten dream weren’t much to go on.

It had all begun when Wally West had visited them together with their fathers. As a Flash, Wally had experienced…a lot of weird things, to say the least, the most recent of which was how he’d just returned from getting lost in the Speed Force. He’d said that the world—and _time_ —that he’d come back to was extremely different. A lot of things had changed. 

The world that Wally had remembered hadn’t had Jon in it, the members of the Justice League had been much older, and a lot of the major events, villains and battles that had been fought had either happened differently or had never happened at all.

Jon’s father had said the same thing—that his family, like Wally, currently live in a time that was different from the one that they’d come from. It was an extremely confusing concept for Jon to grasp.

After a while of listening to the adults discuss the matter, Damian had excused himself, complaining of a headache. The next day, Damian was already telling Jon about a dream that he’d had—one that he’d adamantly claimed had been too vivid to possibly be anything imaginary.

At first, Damian had spoken of a lonely orphan clutching a teddy bear. The next day, the orphan gained strikingly red hair. And as the nights went on, the red-haired boy in Damian’s dreams gained a freckled face, a soothing voice, and then a name.

“Do you know him?” Jon had asked.

“His name…his name is…Colin,” Damian said carefully as his brow furrowed in concentration.

“Who’s Colin?”

“He was my…friend.”

So the mystery had begun. Damian had records of the time that he’d spent in Gotham ever since he’d became Robin. After the dreams, he’d had vague recollections of meeting, rescuing, and befriending this boy called Colin Wilkes…but there was nothing on the Bat Computer’s database—or _any_ computer’s database—that held records of any orphan by that name who’d ever been rescued by Batman and Robin.

Adding to the mystery was the fact that Damian remembered meeting Colin back when he was still ten years old, but now he was thirteen—and Colin seemed to have vanished for those three years. Damian now had no other recollection of Colin ever since then, or any idea of how and why he’d even forgotten him in the first place. Not even Batman or Alfred remembered, and they’d certainly be aware if Damian had made a new friend, considering how rare an event that was.

As Jon understood the matter, Damian was remembering having a friend who’d never existed.

 

***

It was almost Jon’s bedtime and he’d just gotten into his pajamas. The crickets were chirping outside their house in Hamilton County, adding a subtly relaxing hum to the quiet evening. He was just about to close his eyes when a shrill ring pierced his tired ears—a call from Damian.

“I have a new location,” Damian’s voice buzzed in Jon’s phone.

“What makes you so sure?” Jon asked skeptically. He yawned and hoped that Damian would drop the issue altogether. “The warehouse was a dud, searching all those hospital files last week turned up nothing, and all those times we searched random alleys and buildings didn’t help, either. Dad’s starting to ask me what we’re up to…”

“You don’t get it,” Damian replied scathingly. “There’s a _pattern_. The things I remember are marking a path. They’re all places that I remember where we went together. This next one will be significantly important. If we keep at it, I can triangulate his possible location. I don’t care if you’re not coming.”

Jon sighed in irritation. “What’s the point of you calling me, then? You know I can’t leave you alone now that you’ve told me!”

“Be here at ten.”

Jon rolled his eyes—he could imagine Damian smirking at him. It wasn’t very easy being friends with the son of Batman.

***

 

A few hours later, Damian was already leading Jon to the outskirts of Gotham. The dirt roads and the lack of buildings that _weren’t_ run-down gave Jon a sense of unease, but he held his misgivings in light of Damian’s mood. The older boy seemed more serious than usual today, or at the very least, more certain.

“So…what are we looking at?” Jon asked as they stopped in front of a derelict two-story building. From what Jon could tell, it was quite old, and constructed with mostly wood and bricks rather than concrete. Of course, he conceded that he might have been wrong, considering that the wreck in front of them was a barely-standing charred husk of whatever it used to be.

“An orphanage. I dreamt that—no, I remember—this was where he lived before we met,” Damian answered confidently.

“But Damian,” Jon carefully ventured, hoping that Damian wouldn’t get upset, “we already checked the registers of all the orphanages in the entire state on the Bat Computer, remember? There wasn’t a Colin Wilkes in any of them.”

Damian resolutely walked ahead, forcing Jon to trot after him.

“Damian, wait up!”

Damian ignored Jon’s plea as he went inside. “When I saw this place in my dreams, I immediately looked through old news reports—it burned down three years ago, and since they lacked funds, the caretakers never digitized their records. Before that, it was also the center of a trafficking scandal. Children disappearing, never to be found. Police thought that the arson was a cover-up.”

“Weren’t you supposed to have met Colin three years ago?” Jon asked, the doubt in his voice quite evident.

“More or less,” Damian replied as he carefully shoved aside some burnt wooden beams. “I know what you’re thinking. This couldn’t have been where Colin was if it burned down the same time we’d met. But it stands to reason that he could still have a connection to this place. There must be a clue here that leads to him somehow.”

Whatever burned the orphanage wasn’t exactly thorough. Some rooms were barely damaged and still had the scattered possessions of its former inhabitants intact. Damian had guessed that whoever had committed the arson wasn’t trying to erase evidence so much as trying to scare anyone from actually poking around.

The boys came across a room that was littered with debris. Jon thought that it was rather unremarkable, but Damian seemed to have found something. He returned with a dusty brown teddy bear clutched in his hands.

“Damian, I don’t want to judge your taste in toys…but I don’t think now’s the best time to bring that around,” Jon hesitantly said.

Damian held the toy up to his face and explained, “When Colin still couldn’t control his powers, only the sight of his teddy bear would calm his rampage. This was his totem, in a way. His teddy bear was the only thing that tethered him to his true self.”

“Are you saying there’s a chance Colin might go crazy on us?”

“I’m just taking precautions,” Damian said as he tried to pat the bear clean.

Just then, they heard a creaking noise from the roof. It sounded like the bow of a huge ship bending beyond its limits, and they could hear wood splintering and bursting apart. A loud crash erupted from the second floor, prompting both boys to duck for cover.

“I don’t know about this—this place looks like it could collapse at any second,” Jon said worriedly.

Damian didn’t immediately reply. Instead, he approached a bureau and pulled out its cabinets. The contents seemed mostly unburnt.

Then he asked, “Do you want to leave?”

Jon blinked. He couldn’t tell what Damian was thinking with his back turned. Nevertheless, his response was brimming with confidence.

“Of course not.”

“Thanks...”

Jon smiled. Damian’s voice was faint, but even without his super hearing, Jon could hear the gratitude behind it. Damian almost never expressed gratitude, so when he did, it was a huge deal. Right then, there was nowhere else that Jon would rather be.

***

 “It stinks down here,” Jon hissed as each step he took echoed across the hall.

“Your _super smelling_ doesn’t seem so useful.”

“I don’t _have_ super smelling!”

“Then can you at least be super _quiet_?”

Jon simply snorted in reply.

When they had searched the ruined orphanage, Damian and Jon hadn’t found anything significant—no clues that might have pointed them to Colin. But Damian had been undeterred and had insisted upon searching the surrounding area. It was then that he’d found an uneven patch of dirt that suspiciously continued some distance away.

Using Jon’s still-developing X-ray vision, they’d confirmed that the indentation was a trail of sorts made by people and vehicles. It was likely that whoever was using that exact route had done it so many times that when the dirt, snow, and mud began to cover it up after some time, the path had accumulated much less dirt than the surrounding area.

The boys had followed the path until it led them to a sewer entrance that was relatively hidden from the rest of Gotham—one that Damian had inexplicably become familiar with only after they’d gotten there.

“Why do we have to wade in a sewer, Damian? I don’t think Colin would live here!”

“I saw this place in my dreams,” Damian replied warily, as if trying to reassure himself.

“Somehow, that doesn’t fill me with confidence,” Jon sarcastically replied. Each step that he took made a disgustingly wet squelch against the thin film of muck that covered the floor. He began thinking of ways to explain to his mother why he definitely needed new sneakers after this.

“No, this is…different,” Damian replied. He stopped in his tracks and fished out a couple of birdarangs from his utility belt, prompting Jon to be on guard as well. “This place isn’t where Colin could be. This place…it’s where we took down a dangerous criminal.”

“But that was years ago, right? No one could possibly be here now, so why are you getting all nervous? You’re putting me on edge here…”

Damian carefully observed the concrete walls around them. The area that they were traversing was a wide cavernous hall, with several smaller passages branching off to the sides. The only light sources were small utility lamps placed high in the ceiling, spread few and far between. This appeared to be Gotham’s main floodway, used for diverting floodwater during extremely heavy rains. But it hadn’t rained enough to cause a flood in Gotham for nearly a decade, meaning that this part of the sewer was mostly unused. It would make a good hideout for criminal elements.

“You’re still carrying that bear around,” Jon remarked.

“I told you that it could be useful if we find Colin.”

“I think you just want to _keep_ it—”

“ _Shhh_! Stay close. They’re everywhere,” Damian whispered.

“Who’s ‘they’?” Jon asked apprehensively. He looked around but saw nothing, making him even more nervous.

Damian lowered his stance and took a few cautious steps before answering. “I’ve been thoroughly trained to conduct stealthy surveillance. I know amateurs when I see them. They’ve been following us for a few minutes now.”

“I—I never noticed.” Jon gulped anxiously.

“It doesn’t matter. You never grew up with the League of Assassins.”

They eventually emerged from the large tunnel into an even more massive cistern, which Damian guessed was where all the city’s drained rainwater would have been collected. A multitude of makeshift lamps lined the whole circular area, casting an eerie but bright glow on the lifeless gray concrete. The dome ceiling extended almost thirty feet high, but the atmosphere still felt heavy, oppressive and suffocating.

The most noticeable feature of the cistern, however, was what appeared to be a small arena in the very middle, surrounded by several cages. Jon could clearly hear mewling, sniffling and crying coming from within them.

“Damian, those cages! Those are…!”

“Children—forced to fight to the death in some macabre game, all for the entertainment of wealthy patrons,” Damian spat through gritted teeth.

Suddenly, a disturbingly jovial voice echoed throughout the whole area.

“How very smart of you to figure that out, little boy!”

From a tunnel to the southwest came out a tall, shirtless bald man, his entire upper body covered with gruesome scars and stitches that looked like tally marks. All around him, several other burly men came out of hiding from the other tunnels, all wielding guns and knives of different kinds.

The man continued: “But I really have to ask you, how _is_ it that two random young boys in an unfortunate misadventure happen to accurately guess my thriving little business model?”

“ _Business_?” Jon seethed. “You’re _sick_! These kids are in _pain_! They’re _hurt_! And you...you…!”

“Victor Zsasz.” Damian’s voice was dripping with vitriol.

Zsasz cocked his head. “Have we… _met_?”

“I believe we have,” Damian replied, his tone unwavering despite the obvious hatred coursing through him. “I seem to remember cutting your stomach open and you lying on the floor in a pool of your own blood. I’m glad to see you’re looking well—I’ll have the pleasure of doing it again.”

“Damian!” Jon gasped. He’d never seen Damian this…deadly before. He was projecting a cold and calm fury that threatened to lash out at any moment.

A shiver ran through Zsasz’s men as they murmured among themselves. Zsasz himself seemed unperturbed and walked toward the two boys until he was only a foot away. He regarded them intently for a few seconds, before laughing heartily.

“Hahahaha!”

His laugh rang hollow in the cavernous cistern, and his men gripped their weapons even tighter. Jon was beginning to get scared—what exactly had Damian gotten him into?

“Kid, you’ve got guts saying that to me,” Zsasz said after catching his breath. “I think I might just like to see them for myself, even. So, that outfit…Robin, huh? Has the Bat finally found me out after all these years? But if he has, where is he? Did he really think his errand boy was enough? Or did you not tell him about this trip?”

“No, we’re alone,” Damian replied, somehow sounding almost happy with the fact.

“Naughty little Robin, aren’t you? I might have to carve some respect into your skin…” Zsasz sighed as he licked his lips. He relished looking down at the two shorter boys as he casually played with a sharp dagger in his hands.

“Like I said, I already beat you to the ground once before. We put you away in Arkham.”

“Odd,” Zsasz replied. “I think I’d remember being incarcerated or being grievously injured by such a petulant child. I’ve never been caught by Batman all these years. Are you sure you aren’t daydreaming?”

Jon saw Damian’s arm twitch. His recollection of this man, just like all the others, must have indeed been from one of his dreams again.

“And you—dressed up like Superman are we, boy?” Zsasz continued, turning to Jon. “What are you, some kind of fan who can’t get enough of the _Blue Boyscout_? Did Robin trick you into some make-believe game?”

“Why I oughtta—!”

“Don’t encourage him,” Damian chided Jon as he grabbed the younger boy’s shoulder.

“Well, well…” Zsasz’s men surrounded them, all sporting sickening looks. Zsasz gave them a toothy grin as he pointed the dagger at the boys.

“I’ve made a fun little show here with kids like you beating each other to a pulp. It pays us good money from certain clients. But don’t get me wrong, it’s not just the money—I also _love_ it. You two will make fine additions to our little stable…unless you want to bleed to death where you stand.”

“Before we start this,” Damian began, his fury giving him an air of extreme emotionless focus, “I wanted to ask if you’ve ever kidnapped a boy with red hair. He goes by Colin Wilkes, an orphan. He used to live in the orphanage near here where you frequently abducted kids. He almost always carries a teddy bear like this with him.”

Damian held up the bear with one hand. Zsasz then reached out and grabbed the teddy bear, causing Jon to step back in surprise. For Jon, it was quite unnerving how Damian had let Zsasz take it, but it was even more disturbing that Damian didn’t even flinch.

“Hmm, you’re a sharp one, Robin,” Zsasz replied inquisitively. “I’d thought that burning the place down would cover our tracks. But to answer your question, no—I remember every kid that we collect. I’ve even made a mark on my skin for each one that died. None of them have—or _had_ —red hair…unless you count the ones with blood coming out of their heads.”

With a grin and deftness that could only come from experience, Zsasz slashed the teddy bear across the throat, decapitating it. He let the rest of the body drop to the floor, the wet splash it made in the muck creating a menacing echo across the entire cistern.

Damian stared at the mutilated toy as if he could see something that no one else could. He didn’t even pay attention to Zsasz, who was waiting for and expecting a violent reaction. To everyone that was there, Damian looked like he’d momentarily spaced out as he stared intently at the soiled bear.

However, Jon knew better. His enhanced senses could definitely hear how Damian’s pulse had quickened, how the fabric of Damian’s gauntlets squeezed against itself as Damian’s hand balled up into an extremely tight fist. Damian’s face had looked calm, but Jon knew the truth—something vicious had awakened inside his friend.

Finally, after some seconds of incredibly tense silence, Damian calmly answered. “I appreciate the honesty, Zsasz.”

He then turned to Jon and commanded: “Rescue the children.”

Jon had barely nodded when three lethally sharp birdarangs zipped past his head and embedded themselves into the faces of the three nearest henchmen.

“ _Yaaaagh_!”

Masked by the commotion and screams of pain, Jon leaped out of the fray with his superhuman strength and ran toward the cages. He looked back just in time to see two of the henchmen running after him, one brandishing a gun, and the other, a knife. Back near the entrance, Damian was performing a deadly dance, weaving through and around the rest of the grunts together with Zsasz, splatters of blood flying every which way almost every other second.

When Jon had stopped to face his assailants, one of them immediately tried to slash his face, so he’d rolled to the side. Just as he’d gotten to his feet, a gunshot rang out and he’d had to leap backward with a bit of his super speed—there was a bullet hole in the floor where he’d been just moments before.

 _They’re really trying to kill me,_ Jon thought. He was in a precarious situation. He may be the son of the invincible Superman, but his own invincibility had not yet fully developed and it seemingly manifested at random. But the stakes were too high now. If he failed, he’d die, the children would die, Damian would…probably also die. Now he had to focus. He needed to be a hero, invincibility be damned.

Jon breathed in, and with renewed determination, lunged at the grunt with a gun. He dodged a wide jab and then threw a punch of his own at the man’s torso. The man was knocked off his feet and lay sprawled a few yards away. Even with his super strength, Jon was always practicing control, just as his father had taught him—especially against other humans.

Before Jon could turn to look, the knife-wielding man suddenly threw a fierce kick to his ribs, knocking him over and forcing him to bend over in pain. Still clutching his side, Jon got up just in time to dodge a wild swing with the knife, then another, and another. He’d lost his concentration, and the throbbing pain in his ribs made it difficult to think. He managed to parry one of the man’s attacks and throw a punch of his own, but his power had left him in his flustered state and he did little to harm the man.

Jon and the man traded a few more blows before he got caught in a particularly nasty punch to his shoulder. He fell to the floor again, and just as he looked up, he heard the sound of a gun being cocked. The other man had recovered and was pressing the barrel of his gun squarely against his forehead.

_Bang!_

Jon blinked. _Well,_ _I’m not dead,_ He assured himself with extreme relief.

_Bang! Bang! Bang!_

More gunshots, and more squashed bullets falling to the floor. Jon could feel something inconsequentially soft flicking his forehead as if someone was repeatedly poking it with their finger.

“W-what _are_ you?” shouted the flustered henchman, his eyes quivering in fear.

With equal parts relief and unchecked anger, Jon replied by forcefully throwing a punch to the man’s chest and sending him flying across the cistern. The wall he’d crashed into audibly cracked.

Behind him, he felt a dull thud on his shoulder. He turned around to see the other henchman staring in disbelief at his knife, which had bent at an odd angle after failing to pierce Jon’s skin.

 _I’m lucky._ Jon thought. _I have my invulnerability, but the other kids here don’t. And these men just kill and torture them for fun…_

With his eyes glowing crimson, he glared furiously at the whimpering grunt.

“I won’t forgive you!”

Faster than the eye could see, he grabbed the man by the arm and threw him back across one of the tunnels with inhuman strength. The unfortunate grunt disappeared into the darkness after a particularly loud clatter of metal and concrete.

Jon exhaled to compose himself and ran back toward the cages. With his heat vision, he melted the locks and ushered the captive children to hide in one of the access tunnels. Then he ran back to help Damian.

“Damian! Are you oka—?”

The scene in front of Jon made his throat run dry. The floor was littered with the broken bodies of Zsasz’s men. Many of them had their faces horribly beaten. A couple had birdarangs lodged into their eyes. One had three knives piercing his shoulder. The sludge had mixed with all the blood, turning it into a garish hue of red. Jon rushed to them and confirmed that they were breathing—they all seemed alive, if barely. Finally, Jon looked back at Damian.

The young hero was standing as calmly as he’d had before he and Jon had separated. Damian had barely a scratch on him, and his face was spattered with blood—none of which was his own, it seemed—while sporting a perfectly impassive look. Directly across him was Zsasz, who was clutching an arm dripping with blood. He looked quite the worse for wear, with more than a dozen cuts across his whole body, and limping on one foot. More disturbingly, Damian held Zsasz’s long dagger in his hand.

“Heh, you’re a riot, boy,” Zsasz wheezed. “You would have made a great show here, gutting all the other kids…”

Before Zsasz could say another word, Damian pounced.

Jon could see it, he could _hear_ it—Damian’s sure but steady heartbeat, his increased breathing—this was dangerous. Jon was certain that Damian was out to _kill_.  

“Damian, _don’t_!”

But before Jon could stop him, Zsasz let out a shrill scream in agony.

“ _Yaaaaagh_!”

Jon rushed as fast as he could, using his super speed to tackle Damian to the floor. But he knew that he was too late.

“Damian…what have you done?” Jon asked in disbelief.

“Ask him yourself,” Damian replied wearily.

Confused, Jon got off Damian and carefully walked over to Zsasz, who was slumped against the wall. The man had his hands over his head, both of which had been pierced—one on top of the other—held together by his own dagger. Damian’s stab had been so forceful that the blade even penetrated the mortar between two blocks of the wall’s concrete, effectively pinning Zsasz in place.

“Hah…even after all that, you still don’t have what it takes to finish the job,” Zsasz huffed. He was finding it difficult to breathe.

Damian casually walked up to him and nonchalantly kicked him in the face. Zsasz passed out.

“ _Damian_!” Jon chided.

“He’ll live,” Damian said. “I’ve signaled my father. He’ll be here with the Gotham PD in a while. We’re leaving.”

“Just like that?” Jon asked cautiously. He sensed that Damian was very…out of sorts, to say the least. “What about finding clues or…”

“It’s pointless,” Damian muttered. He sat back down on the cold floor and leaned against the wall. “I’m tired. I’m tired of all this. Tired of being proven wrong by my dreams, tired of thinking they were ever memories.

“My dreams showed me that we’d already dealt with Zsasz before, both Colin and I, and later with my father. It didn’t make sense that he was still at large here, and having no memories of all the times that we’d caught him. Him not remembering ever facing me or Colin made no sense at all. Colin never being in any records or anything else made no sense either.”

Jon listened silently as Damian went on.

“The only way that any of this makes sense is if none of it ever happened—defeating Zsasz, meeting Colin, being…friends with Colin.”

“Damian…” Jon reached out with his arm but stopped midway. He didn’t know if Damian would appreciate a hand on his shoulder in the middle of such an awkwardly miserable situation.

“None of what I remembered had ever happened. And Colin…Colin never existed,” Damian stood up and turned his back on Jon. “I’m tired, Jon. I’m going home. I just wasted your time.”

“Damian, I…I’m sorry…” Jon’s voice trailed off—Damian had already run ahead and completely missed his reply. He balled up his fists in frustration—why was it so hard to say anything comforting to Damian?

***

 “I don’t see the ‘important reason’ you talked about on the phone,” Damian complained out of boredom.

“It’s important enough that I skipped school today just for it…for you,” Jon replied cheerfully.

“Tt.”

“You’ll see,” Jon assured Damian by patting him on the shoulder. He cringed, but didn’t retaliate, which Jon took for a good sign.

The boys were standing outside a hallway in Gotham Academy, just before the final bell had rung that day. It had been a couple of weeks since their encounter with Zsasz, and Damian hadn’t talked to Jon at all since then. But a few days ago, something incredible had happened at Jon’s school, and he’d called Damian, urgently asking his friend to come with him to Gotham Academy.

_Rrrrring!_

With the final bell, the students began milling out of their classrooms, filling the air with a hundred excited chattering voices.

“If this is your way of trying to get me into a classroom instead of homeschool, then you’re failing miserably—”

“Damian,” Jon interrupted and placed his hands on each side of Damian’s head to point him in the right direction. “I think I’ve found your friend.”

And just as Jon had said it, Damian saw a tall, lanky boy come out of one of the classrooms, his head crowned by wavy red hair. Freckles peppered his face and he had bright eyes that radiated warmth and kindness.

Damian could only say a single word.

“Colin…”

With both boys focused on Colin, they were able to hear the redhead’s conversation with some of his peers.

_“Yeah, I’ll meet you guys tomorrow in the council room. Bring the drafts, okay?”_

_“Sure, Colin! Are you going to bring the sixth-graders again?”_

_“Of course! Please be patient with them—we’ll need to have new members eventually anyway, and this is the best way to expose them early.”_

Damian turned away from the scene, his face an unfathomable mask of confusion.

“I don’t get it, Jon. How…? How did you find out? Why here?”

“A couple of days ago, some eighth-graders from Gotham Academy showed up at our school. Turns out they’d won some sort of environment contest or something, and as part of that, they have to tell other schools in the country about how to protect nature and stuff.

“Colin was their leader. He was on stage the longest. He introduced himself—Colin Wilkes, he said, and he looked exactly like how you said he did.”

“He looks a lot taller than I remembered,” Damian muttered as he chose to stare at an unremarkable spot on the floor.

“Well, he’s thirteen now, just like you, and you’re not exactly on the tall side— _oww_!” Jon rubbed the spot on his arm where Damian had just hit him.

“Why couldn’t we find him before?” Damian persisted. “We searched all the records…”

“Damian, what we searched were orphanage records, police reports, and hospital lists. We never searched schools,” Jon said as calmly as he could. He could clearly see that Damian was upset. “We were searching for Colin the kidnapped orphan. But all this time, he was Colin, the normal boy.”

“I’d already asked one of the teachers here,” he continued. "Colin was never orphaned. He was always a smart student who went out of his way to help people. He’s the president of the school’s Nature Society and a lot of the younger students really look up to him. Well, I think he’s really cool, too…you should’ve seen him when he went to our school…”

Damian gave no indication that he was listening as he watched one of the younger students approach Colin and happily talk to him about some mundane matter that Damian didn’t care about. All that he saw was that Colin was smiling, laughing, and completely at peace. Damian shook his head—he’d made up his mind.

“He looks happy here,” Damian said finally.

“Yeah, want me to call him over?” Jon asked with childlike enthusiasm.

“No, we’re leaving, and we’re never coming back.”

“ _What_?” Jon replied sharply. “We’ve come all this way! We finally found him! Why can’t you just talk to him? Why are we leaving?”

Damian walked back out the school’s main doors with Jon in tow. He breathed in deeply without answering, as if he was also trying to convince himself.

 _The Colin that I’d met was an orphan. He’d been kidnapped and tortured and experimented on. He’d been injected with chemicals and forced to fight against his will. He’d seen his friends die at the hands of Zsasz, and had afterwards felt that he needed to sacrifice having the normal life of a child in order to fight crime. To be like_ me _._

_We’d met because of his suffering. If never meeting me in the first place means he gets spared all that, I’d gladly walk away. It’s just as Wally said—somehow, some way, time changed. The Colin I’d known was from a different time. This Colin right now is different, too—he’s happy. I won’t ruin that for him._

“Damian, this is important to you. _He’s_ important to you. Don’t just waste this chance to start over!” Jon pleaded once more.

“He’s better off not having me for a friend, Jon. With the kind of friendship we’ve had before, and with the kind of life I lead now, it’s safer that way,” Damian concluded. Without waiting for Jon’s rebuttal, he walked away.

Jon fumed as he crossed his arms, staring angrily at Damian’s silhouette.

“Idiot. It’s not better for _you_.”

***

 “Master Damian, there’s someone you should probably see.”

“Do I have a choice, Alfred?” Damian asked cynically. He’d been stewing in his room for a few days. For once, he’d actually kept his promise to his father to focus on his homeschooling—if only to distract himself—and Alfred’s unwelcome interruption was quite vexing.

“He was asking for Mr. Wayne, but since your father is away, I’d thought that you could entertain our guest. Perhaps you could even make a new friend.”

“A friend…?” Damian looked up at the old butler. “What do you mean?”

“He’s a young man that looks to be around your age, if only slightly taller…”

Damian’s curiosity got the better of him as he purposefully marched toward the foyer. There, seated on one of the sofas, was a tall lanky boy with wavy red hair, his freckles standing out against the shade of pink on his cheeks. He looked quite unused to the Wayne Manor’s extravagant trappings. When he saw Damian, he bowed.

“Uhm, Mr. Wayne, sir…? I’m sorry to barge in like this but I was told that—”

“Colin…?” Damian sputtered. “What are you doing here?”

Colin stared quizzically at Damian. “You know my name….?”

 _Jon Kent, what have you done this time?_ Damian immediately thought. This was definitely his young friend’s doing. Damian’s incredulity at Jon’s scheme left him speechless, which Colin mistook for a sign to continue.

“Uh, funny story, actually. One of the kids we’d met in our awareness tours called me up and said that the Wayne Foundation was looking for student partners with environmental advocacies for scholarships and such. He told me to go to this address and—sorry, is this a bad time, Mr. Wayne?”

Colin was wearing a semi-formal outfit with a neatly-pressed long-sleeved shirt and a matching tie. He had a smile that belied a hint of nerves, but his expression was radiant and full of hope. Damian thought to himself that Colin looked better that way.

“Mr. Wayne is my father. He’s currently out at work. But…I could keep you company in the meantime, I suppose. If you don’t mind, that is.”

“Not at all, uh, uhm….”

“I’m Damian,” Damian said with a half-smirk that passed for a smile.

He offered his hand and Colin gladly shook it. Damian mused that Colin’s hands were warm and friendly, and briefly wondered if it had always been that way. It was a calming sense of touch that he could get used to.

Colin serenely met Damian’s eyes, and beamed.

 “Damian, huh? That’s a cool name.”

 

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Author’s notes:
> 
> Here’s a little background on this story. Jon Kent as we know him today is meant to be Damian’s sole almost-same-aged friend (boyfriend). But before Jon, we had Colin Wilkes. 
> 
> Colin first appeared in the late 2000s before the new 52. His story was pretty dark—while Jon was cheerful, sunny and innocently carefree, Colin was an orphan who was kidnapped and experimented on by Scarecrow. He was injected with a version of Bane’s Venom, turning him into a mindless fighting machine before being subdued and rescued by Batman. After learning to control his Venom-induced powers, He later teamed up with Robin to defeat Victor Zsasz, who at the time was running a deadly child gladiator arena.
> 
> Despite his brief appearance in the comics, there’s a consensus among a lot of fans that Colin was one of Damian’s more significant first friends outside of the Batfamily. For my friends and many others, Colin would be the natural team up for Damian, both as friends and potential partners (both in and out of bed)
> 
> But when the New 52 reboot in 2011 came, many of DC’s heroes’ histories were reset, and Damian’s adventures with Colin were written out of continuity, as was Colin himself. When the DC Rebirth reboot happened in 2016, DC reinstated some old elements from before the New 52 continuity into the main timeline and mixing the two to create a balance of what fans wanted. This was most notable with Superman (who has been established as the classic Superman from the 80’s 90’s), whose history was restored but had the new addition of Jon as his son and the element of fatherhood and family in his character. Another was Wally West, who had all but disappeared during the New 52. He was reinstated in Rebirth as one of the only people who was aware that the timeline had changed (signified by the reboots). His earliest Rebirth stories involve him informing other heroes of the change in their timeline.
> 
> Even with Rebirth however, Colin was still missing from continuity, and is unlikely to make a return. Some fans of the Damian x Colin ship are still hoping, though, and I do believe that if Colin is ever going to return, it would be perfect in the just-released series of Super Sons featuring Damian and Jon.
> 
> Tl;dr
> 
> Colin was Damian’s first real friend two reboots ago, meaning they were friends from another previous timeline. With the latest reboot of DC Rebirth returning some old beloved concepts from before the reboots, I just thought that it was a bit plausible to have Colin return to Damian’s life, and I just imagined it in the most realistic and character-building scenario that I could.


End file.
